


La Marseillaise

by Belphegor



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Curse of the Black Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-29 13:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12632175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belphegor/pseuds/Belphegor
Summary: Just because you're a grown man and a pirate doesn't mean you can't visit your family once in a while. Or, Capitaine Chevalle stops by on the way to the Brethren Court to see his mother and assure her that reports of his hanging were exaggerated. Set roughly between the end ofCurse of the Black Pearland the beginning ofAt World's End.Previously posted at FFnet in theMothers of the Caribbeancollection.





	La Marseillaise

**Author's Note:**

> The [Mothers of the Caribbean](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4845090/1/Mothers_of_the_Caribbean) collection was created by a few PotC authors (including yours truly) way back in 2009, when it just hit us that, while the characters' fathers were often mentioned and sometimes showed up onscreen, precious few mentions were made of mothers. So we each took one character and created a mother that would suit them. Go read the other stories, by the way, they're awesome.

Augustine Marie de la Tour du Pin ( _née_ Augustina Maria Pierlunghi) had always been something of a curiosity in Marseilles, the city she had made hers over the years. For one thing, she was famous – even infamous – for being prone to wild rages and equally loud joys, which every single new denizen of the docks area quickly came to know about.

There was also the way she dressed. Watching her as she strode down the street, all flying ribbons and fabrics dyed in every colour available was quite the experience in a city where women traditionally – especially the widows’ clan, which she happened to be a part of – never left the severe black garments they wore to go outside their homes.

But what was most particular about the woman – what was most passionately discussed on the square benches under the shade after Sunday mass – was the well-known fact that she was in league with the most prominent pirate society in the whole region. Not much was actually clear about this, but it was widely acknowledged that at least some of her offspring had a reputation that rivalled the best _naufrageurs_ of the Atlantic coast – and even the likes of François l’Olonnais’ and la Buse’s, whom the Marseillais had heard of in spite of the distance. Living in a harbour meant that news travelled faster than inland, anyway.

Her husband, the late Marquis de la Tour du Pin, must be having a very entertaining time rolling in his grave were he to know about it, but the fact remained that to be able to make ends meet the impoverished Marquise had made some interesting investments.

So it would not come as a surprise if you were to tell someone in Marseilles that you happened to see a tall, gangly and somewhat unsavoury fellow (in spite of his faded and frayed but still stylish long coat and wig) sneaking in the dead of night into Mrs de la Tour du Pin’s house.

Which was precisely happening right now.

The man, whose face was hidden in the shadow of his large feathered hat, avoided the big entrance and went round the back of the old two-storey house with the confident step of an intimate.

Augustine was waiting for him in the foyer, fully dressed, a candlestick in her hand. Without a word, she engulfed him into a vigorous one-armed embrace that knocked the breath right out of his lungs.

“Good evening, Mère,” he said when he was sure his voice wouldn’t come out as a breathless squeak.

She detached herself from him and took a step back, eyeing him critically.

“Thin as a rack, as usual – not that the gaol’s been helping any, right? If I ever was to lay my hands on those filthy English pigs I’d gut them, I’d knock their teeth out and make them swallow, I’d –”

The man took out his hat and followed his mother to the kitchen, where she took some dried meat from the larder, a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a loaf of bread, without stopping her ranting and raving even to breathe.

“Eat! And drink,” she added, putting a jug and two drinking cups on the table and drawing a chair next to his. “We’ll talk after.”

When he had eaten and drunk his fill, he pushed his cup away. Augustine needed no other sign to start firing a volley of questions, some of which came out mangled by her still-prominent Neapolitan accent.

“What happened? What’s the situation in the Caribbean? How’d you get caught? How did you get away, for that matter?”

“That is a lot of questions at once, Mère,” he said with a dry smile. “Pick a first if you really want me to answer.”

“Don’t get ironic with me, Mister,” she snapped, taking a swig out of her own cup. “I’m still your mother, this rubbish will never work on me. Tell me how they caught you, for starters.”

The man shifted slightly on his chair somewhat awkwardly. Being put to the question by one’s own mother at forty plus years old has great potential for discomfort.

“In the most embarrassing manner, of course. Quite rude, too. I was just leaving Saint Domingue where I’d been conducting some… business and they just collected me there. They’d been hiding in a creek on the Spanish side of the island, of all places.”

“How many?”

“A sloop and a frigate. EITC, both.” His cheeks flushed red under the powder. “I’ve been captured by the French, the British and even the Spaniards over the years – but I never _dreamed_ I would be taken prisoner by a ragtag shopkeepers’ army!”

The Marquise nodded and waited without making any comment. When the anger and shame that radiated off him had cooled down a little, he continued.

“Jack Sp – Captain Jack Sparrow contacted me in Port Royal with that blacksmith friend of his, young Turner. Tampered with the rope, blew up the whole powder magazine and smuggled me out of Jamaica through the rumpus. It was too late for Le Cléac’h, though.”

He paused, suddenly appearing very interested in the bottom of the empty cup he was idly twiddling with his long thin fingers.

Something twisted grimly in Augustine’s face. Her youngest son always took it as a personal offence when he lost some of his crew. The pirates manning the _Fancy_ were no gentilshommes for sure, but they were fine seamen with no more of a taste for blood and carnage than was necessary in their profession. Their captain happened to be particular about that.

“Your cox’n? They hung him?”

“Aye, we were caught together. He was executed two days before I escaped. Not alone, too …”

“What do you mean?”

He filled his cup again and gulped half of the liquid before answering, “There were others on the gallows with him that day. Three men, plus a skinny lad who couldn’t have been a day older than sixteen. I’ll be damned if one of them ever set foot on a pirate ship before. They’d just been rounding up people at random, Mère.”

This time, it was her turn to fill her cup and take a hearty swig. Her hand was imperceptibly shaking when she put it down and stated, jaw clenched, “It’s begun, then.”

“Yes, it has. That’s the very reason Sparrow sprung me out of gaol in Port Royal. I don’t know what he’s up to, but something tells me that with Barbossa gone and me owing him a life debt, whatever he’s plotting stands some chance of succeeding.”

The old Marquise gave a brief, dry smile. “So you’re headed for Shipwreck Cove now, aren’t you?”

“As soon as I can gather my crew. Where’s my ship?”

Her smile became a smirk of the famous ‘I-know-more-than-you-do’ kind.

“Sent word with that Basque blighter of yours who has that jaw-breaker of a name.”

“Etxegarai?”

“Right, him. The _Fancy_ and your crew are waiting for you in the little creek near the calanques of Sormiou. You know, the one where you like to moor whenever you feel like sneaking into civilised country to see your mother.” She gave a smug sniff, never one for false modesty. “Told them to have supplies ready for a long voyage, too.”

He gave a broad smile and – ever the gentleman – rose from his chair to take Augustine’s wrinkled hand and kiss the back of it.

“Thank you, Mère. You are fantastic.”

“And well aware of that fact. Aren’t you staying the night?” she added, seeing him adjust his wig and button up his frock again. He shook his head.

“The sun will rise in an hour or two. I have to go now if I do not want to turn a discreet sortie into a grand last stand.”

“Of course.” She rose from her chair too, albeit with some difficulty, and thanked him with a clipped smile when he gently took her arm. “After this Brethren business is over, I’d like you to come back and tell me the particulars of what happened. And don’t worry too much about being recognised. Here is the last place the King’s soldiers would think of searching to find you.”

“I did tell you again and again I had good reasons for changing my name.”

His smug smile mirrored his mother’s earlier smirk. She rolled her eyes and shrugged, the candlestick in her hand swinging dangerously.

“Of course you did, and I’m glad you kept at least the first name I baptised you with but… For Heaven’s sake, what kind of ludicrous name is Chevalle?”

This debate was already a quarter of a century old. He let the storm rage, waiting for it to eventually pass over his head.

Before he walked out, he paused on the threshold to say goodbye. His mother’s hard blue eyes looked up at him and stopped the casual words in his throat. There was something akin to fear lurking in their depths, and he had never known Augustine de la Tour du Pin to be afraid of anything.

“Be… extra careful,” she muttered as she fussed idly with one of the lapels of his overcoat. For some reason, this shook him more than the expression on her face or the sudden hesitation in her voice. She never corrected his clothes, trusting him to look the way he wanted to and to have the good sense to know when ‘fancy’ became ridiculous. She must really be afraid to forget herself like that.

Dropping his usual pretence at a cool, aloof demeanour he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

When had she become so small? The formidable dragon of Marseilles, who whenever she roared, sang and laughed vocalised it throughout the whole city, suddenly turned into a frail, petite, _old_ woman, clutching at the only remnant of family she had left and scared to lose him as she had the others.

He didn’t promise her anything. He never did, anyway. The words would only sound false.

Tonight, though, he felt an overwhelming need to comfort her by saying ‘Until I see you again’ rather than just ‘Adieu’.

“I will do my very best, Maman,” he whispered in her white hair.

“The devil you will. You never listen to your mother.”

Her eyes were slightly over-bright when she pulled away from the embrace, but their usual steely glint had returned. With even a hint of something mischievous in them that her son had come to be wary of over the years.

“Be sure to pass my best regards to Capitán Villanueva,” she said with the shadow of a grin. An eye-tooth briefly winked white.

The Capitaine immediately bristled, and judging by the subtly widening smirk making its way amongst the wrinkles of his mother’s face, he had fallen right into the trap.

“Mère,” he replied, somewhat dryly, “I do wish you’d stop taunting me about that infernal Spaniard heel. Sometimes you give me the unpleasant impression that you actually _enjoyed_ your captivity aboard his ship.”

“His behaviour was in every way worthy of a hidalgo – and a gentilhomme as well, since you appear not to accept the fact that they mean the same thing.”

“He is a scoundrel and a rascally flat-footed lout. And if he were to add another word on the subject of your person, I should have to trounce him.” He set his large hat at a jaunty angle and shot her a haughty, self-satisfied smile that resurrected his father for a second. “Again.”

_And he would have to trounce you as well_ , she didn’t say, perfectly confident that he still would get the unspoken message. _Again_.

This time he didn’t linger more on the threshold. Instead, he gave an elegant bow – she swatted the annoying feather away from her face with an age-old gesture – and wrapped his coat around himself.

And like _that_ – he was gone.

Augustine Marie de la Tour du Pin tightened her scarf around her shoulders to ward off the cold chill of the night and closed the back door.

Dawn found her still sitting at her kitchen table, staring in front of her while the light of her candles went out. Any witness would not have believed that the loud, fearsome Italian-turned-Marseillaise noblewoman and this subdued, grim-looking thinker were the same person.

When a shaft of feeble light fell on the worn table covered in wax stains in front of her, she rose with a sigh, ignoring the sharp protestations of some of her mutinous bones, and grabbed a quill, an inkpot and a few sheets of paper.

She had a letter to write.

_En honor a la señora Catalina de Villanueva,_ _València_ _,_ _España_

_Dear Madam,_

_You have never seen me in person and my name would not recall anything for you, but believe me when I say that I have both our sons’ best interests at heart in writing to you. Recent developments in the Caribbean have recently come to my attention, as well as disquieting activity on the part of the British EITC. As Pirate Lords, I believe your son and mine too conscious of their status to even think the word of ‘truce’, but I have an unmitigated trust in our ability as mothers to be reasonable and rational._

_Perhaps, at least until the end of the Pirate Conclave, we could settle some form of non-aggression arrangement …_

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> I incorporated elements from the AWE videogame (thanks to the PotC wiki) for everything that pertained to Chevalle, but Augustine is all mine.
> 
> The word ‘calanques’ means the kind of high, narrow inlets found on the French Mediterranean coast between Marseilles and La Ciotat, as well as the Italian Appennines. They go deeper into land than coves and would have been perfect for hiding stuff like lurking pirate ships. ‘Naufrageurs’ were wreckers, land-based pirates who lured merchant ships on sharp rocks on coasts by night with fires and fake lighthouses to sink and rob them.
> 
> A ‘gentilhomme’ has the same kind of etymology as ‘gentleman’: a man of not noble, but gentle, birth, meaning his family owned property; someone who would have had the right to bear arms (think d’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers). When Augustine says a ‘hidalgo’ is the same thing, she’s actually wrong: it means someone from minor nobility, so it’s one rung up the social ladder. Chevalle sneering at Villanueva is not only being an enormous snob, he’s also flouting the social order of the time. (Then again, y’know, _pirate_ , so what the hell :D) ‘Marquis’ and ‘Marquise’ ([markee] and [markeez]) mean ‘Marquess’ and ‘Marchioness’.
> 
> Extegarai (also written Etchegaray) is indeed a Basque name, and is pronounced [etsheh-gari], rhyming with ‘pie’.
> 
> ‘Mère’ is ‘mother’ (very formal) and ‘Maman’ is equivalent to ‘Mum/Mummy’. My back story for Augustina is that the Marquis and her were married when she was quite young, and loved each other very much until his death. Then she more or less pushed her kids into pirating :S Of the four children (four sons) they had, only the youngest (our Capitaine) is still alive, the others having been caught and executed or killed in battle. 
> 
> I do think the Marquise and Doña Catalina will be able to reach agreement concerning a temporary truce between the captains and crews of the _Fancy_ and the _Centurión_ :o)
> 
> I know, there’s still tons of stuff that goes unexplained, most of it is comprised of hints to nibbling plot bunnies... I really haven’t given those a second thought, the story seemed to write itself at some points, but if someone should pick up the mess of hinted info and make a story out of it, I’d be delighted, lazy arse that I am...


End file.
